The Pretender's Crown

DMITRI, IN ALUNAER; AND ROBERT, IN GALLIN

Two witchlords lift their gazes to the horizon, one looking south and the other north. They see power flaring: no, not flaring. Erupting, sustaining itself, boiling through storm clouds, announcing itself as a presence not to be contained, nor to be denied. Dmitri, in Alunaer, folds long fingers in front of his lips and wonders if the woman who bears such magic is his to persuade; Robert, twenty miles and a world away, smiles, certain that the woman who bears that magic is his to control.

Javier staggers to his feet among a white-faced crew and stares into the storm as though he can see a face in it; this is what the survivors will say, that the young king of Gallin's grey eyes were possessed, his face grim, and they will say that he, graced by God, looked on the fallen one himself…

… and then threw himself forward with a howl that cut above even the sound of rain and wind and lashing water. Threw himself into the eye of it and from the bow of the ship slammed his hands together and sent forth a terrible lance of God's own strength, so brilliant it turned black clouds to silver and ripped a rainbow across the sheeting rain. Some will say he shouted his mother's name; others that he called on God's son to guide him. They will all say he faced down the devil to save this crew, and much later, when he's come to his senses, Javier won't find it in his heart to deny them.

The truth is that as he surges forward to reclaim his place at the prow and to meet magic with magic against Belinda Primrose a second time, the ship pitches just so, and he's flung fifteen feet forward, as ignominious an approach as his retreat was seconds earlier. The truth is that the bolt of witchpower that crashes from him is little more than a desperate attempt to keep from flying overboard.

It does, however, do the things they later claim it did: it sears moon-coloured light through the storm, cuts rainbows across a landscape that has recently been a second cousin to Hell. It's good that others appreciate it: Javier himself is in no shape to.

He can't see Belinda, but he can feel her, a source of golden burning power in his mind. She might lie beneath him again as she did in his gardens, coaxing her first witchlight to life: that is the closeness he feels to her. She's not part of the Aulunian navy; there's a sense of solidity to her presence that even his own can't match, not while he rides the tempest-torn sea. He won't be able to drown her with her failing ships, but he knows now that she's near, and only has to reach land to find her and take a knife to her wrists and ankles and body before finally drawing a red weeping line across her throat. She will lie insensible, awaiting him; of that much he is certain. She fell once beneath his will, and he is stronger now.